Mother and Calf, White Rhinos, Eastern Cape, South Africa. No geotags or details with this one folks. There are too many
poachers out there ready to kill any Rhino for its horn, which is just
hair, just because sad believers in Chinese medicine think it has
magical powers. The same logic would suggest if you eat feathers you
will be able to fly! Try grinding up your own hair and swallowing that
instead. There might not be a single one left outside a zoo by 2020: photo by G Bayliss, 30 January 2014

It's In The Horns.Two rhinos, mother and child, in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania: photo by Allison Mickel, 1 January 2013

Burn Horn, Save Rhinos Czech Republic. Ceremony. On Sunday, the 21st September 2014, at 11am at Dvůr Králové Zoo
in the Czech Republic and Bratislava Zoo in Slovakia, Ministers for
Environment for both countries set alight seized illegal and stockpiled
rhino horns in a gesture symbolising the world has reached the 11th hour
to save rhinosExample of a rhino horn and traditional medicine containing rhino horn: photo by International Fund for Animal Rescue Blog, 21 September 2014

‘Sudan doesn’t know how
precious he is. His eye is a sad black dot in his massive wrinkled face
as he wanders the reserve with his guards.Sudan is the last male northern white Rhino on the planet. It seems an image of human tenderness that Sudan is lovingly guarded
by armed men who stand vigilantly and caringly with him. But of course
it is an image of brutality. Even at this last desperate stage in the
fate of the northern white rhino, poachers would kill Sudan if they
could and hack off his horn to sell it on the Asian medicine market" [Jonathan Jones].: photo by CB2/ZOB/Brent
Stirton/National Geographic via The Guardian, 12 May 2015

A rhino killed for its horn last month in Kruger National Park, South Africa: photo by Salym Fayad/EPA via the Guardian, 21 March 2015

Asian rhino (Rhinocerotidae spp.). There are fewer than 4,000 wild rhinos in Asia. All
three Asian species are highly targeted for their horns. Two, the Javan
and Sumatran rhinos are critically endangered. The animals are killed
and their horns sawn off and smuggled to their destination markets in
Asia: photo by STR/EPA via the Guardian, 5 February 2015

An Indian one horned rhino
in the Kaziranga national park, Assam, India. The park is a rhino
sanctuary and is helping to revive the species and protect them from
poachers: photo by Paul Hilton/HSI via The Guardian, 8 January 2015

Keeper Mohamed Doyo leans
over to pat female northern white rhino Najin in her pen where she is
being kept for observation at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, home to three of the last six northern white rhinos on
Earth. Keepers say it is highly unlikely the three will ever reproduce
naturally, meaning the species is doomed to extinction, unless science
can help. One of
the last six in the world has died in a San Diego safari park: photo by Ben Curtis/AP via the Guardian, 15 December 2014Orphaned baby rhino in Lewa
Wildlife Conservancy, Ngare Ndare forest, Kenya. The conservancy is
hand-raising three orphaned baby rhino: Nicky, Hope and Kilifi. Rhino
are becoming extinct as a result of the brutal poaching fuelled by an
illegal international market for their horns: photo by Luca Ghidoni/Barcroft Media via The Guardian, 12 September 2014

A billboard in Hanoi,
Vietnam, reads: ‘Rhino horns are just like buffalo horns, human hair and
nail. Do not waste your money,’ to mark the World Rhino Day on 22
September. This year’s theme was ‘Five rhino species forever.’: photo by Luong Thai Linh/EPA via The Guardian, 26 September 2014

Beijing, China.Girls Girls dressed as bumblebees make conversation at the conference: photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP via The Guardian, 29 April 2015

Keeper Mohamed Doyo leans
over to pat female northern white rhino Najin in her pen where she is
being kept for observation at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, home to three of the last six northern white rhinos on
Earth. Keepers say it is highly unlikely the three will ever reproduce
naturally, meaning the species is doomed to extinction, unless science
can help. One of
the last six in the world has died in a San Diego safari park: photo by Ben Curtis/AP via the Guardian, 15 December 2014

Being the last individuals of a vanishing species, and having experienced the persistent ferocity of a more powerful predator -- that is, homo necans, man the killer -- would seem a pretty sad-making thing, on the face of it.

However when one sees photos of rhinos, as also of elephants, in company among others of their species, it's quite apparent that their social bonding and in particular their maternal instincts remain in place, even amid this tragedy, as the shades of evening come down -- their presence as wild creatures on the planet now to be numbered perhaps in months and years, not in millennia... though of course it took millennia for their magnificence as organisms to evolve.

It was them, not us, who should have "inherited the earth".

So it may be the sadness is a combination of their appearance of dejection with our terrible knowledge.

But how does the sense of compassion/empathy we feel when we see endangered animals engage with the sense of privilege and entitlement, and the accompanying denial of compassion/empathy, which is an identifying feature of the new money elites?

The haste of the world to fall on its knees before the sheer quantitative enormity of the consuming capacity of the Chinese economy, that grand babylonian tower built of sheer accumulation of units, would suggest that there is a readiness, a willingness, indeed an eagerness to write off all other species, large or small, cute and cuddly or no, the minute Chinese dollars walk into the market.

Their "system" now seems nothing more than a grotesque elaboration of the capitalist model, reaching apogee and nadir in the same historical moment.

The celestial double-happiness peak of the "human experiment", and the vicious malebolge pit of same, all wrapped into one.

The treatment of animals says everything about the culture.

Dogs are publicly bred as food animals, and, in open air street markets, burned alive in barbecue pits, watched by the gleeful customers who are about to consume them.

To serve the high-end clientele, the Chinese elites, wild animal restaurants are now exfoliating, particularly in the border zone pleasure playgrounds, where the whoring, gaming, and endangered-species consumption, along with the common garden variety do-a-deal business, may all go on unimpeded, under the same uncaring sky.